Linda Kroff's art-making crosses the genres of photography, installation, site-specific community-based projects, performance, and public art. Her artwork touches on human relationships and like her nominator, Bart Parker, she is fascinated by language. "24 Words: 1 Year" was created collaboratively, over time and via a long-distance exchange. Over the course of a year, Kroff photographed hands in response to certain words sent to her.
An artist and educator, Kroff received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL) and is professor of art at California State University, Fullerton. Her photographic and installation works have been shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (Winston-Salem, NC) and the Art Museum Gallery (Memphis, TN), among others. Major public art commissions include works for Bank of America, Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind (Talladega, AL), and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (Atlanta, GA). Her work has been reviewed in national publications and she has received several grants, including a 1994 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography.
The space between two points is dependent upon measurement and of course, is relative. How you choose to read and think about measurement is entirely up to you (the viewer). Similarly, the distance or connection between words and images, like the relationship between two individuals, is an entirely subjective experience. "24 Words: 1 Year" is the result of a subjective experiment. Every month for a year, two members of a core five-person artist collective would e-mail all five members a word to which each would create a piece, restricted only by the size of the final work. No other directions were given and each artist was free to explore whatever medium, thought processes or outcome they each felt appropriate to the concept of Interstices (the space between). Two words per month, two problems to solve—it seemed like a small task when I started. Ultimately, I am interested in the ineffable dialogue between what is thought and what is spoken,...what is imaged and what is written.
Bart Parker, a founding member of the PRC, joined the Board of Directors in 1976 when meetings were held in Chris Enos's Boston loft. Parker earned a BA in English Literature and creative writing from the University of Colorado (Boulder, CO), and a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI). Parker, who works in photographic collage, taught at the University of Illinois (Urbana, IL), the University of California (Los Angeles, CA), the San Francisco Art Institute (San Francisco, CA), the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Washington University (St. Louis, MO), and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI).
In 2002, Parker was declared Honored Educator of the Year by the Society for Photographic Education. Parker received two Artist Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and two Polaroid Individual Artist's grants. His anthology, A Close Brush with Reality: Photographs and Writings, 1972-1981, was published by the Visual Studies Workshop (1981). Parker's work appeared in nearly 400 exhibitions, numerous publications, and is held in many collections worldwide, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA), George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL), and Harvard's Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA).
